City is in ruins, but community remains

This nation has been pinballing from one tragedy to another during the past half-year, and at times it seems we are simply incapable of absorbing more grief.

From the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy to the shooting in Newtown, Conn., to the bombing here at the Boston Marathon to the latest - the tornado that on Monday literally leveled a large portion of the city of Moore, Okla.

Yes, the city of 55,000 today lies in ruins.

But improbable as it might seem now, the community of Moore, Okla., remains intact.

That distinction was made perfectly clear in the sight of first responders - official and otherwise - working through the night on Monday to clear the rubble that was once an elementary school, in the slim hope of finding more survivors. These are men and women whose children attended those schools, whose families gathered together at church, and who hurried their neighbors into shelters when the skies began to churn.

What greater sense of "community" can there be, after all, than a teacher who throws her body over her students, huddled in a school bathroom, as the tornado roars around them?

Yes, as we have so often before, we saw this week both the worst of Mother Nature - and the best of humanity.

When terrorists struck Boston just a month ago the people of Oklahoma reached out immediately, because they understood our pain and our grief ? They reached out to us. Now it is time for us to reach back.

- Boston Herald

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City is in ruins, but community remains

This nation has been pinballing from one tragedy to another during the past half-year, and at times it seems we are simply incapable of absorbing more grief.